M&H 02_Tonra 01 08/04/2014 07:14 Page 34
2
Thinking through Transnational
Studies, DiasporaStudies and gender
Breda Gray
The 1990s saw a proliferation of studies across disciplines in the humanities and
social sciences variously invoking the terms transnational(ism) and diaspora in
accounting for migration and associated phenomena including transgenerational
ethnic identities and cross-border practices. These terms are deployed most often
as counterpoints to the assimilation model of immigrant incorporation and the
container model of the nation-state. As such

Bringing together leading authorities on Irish women and migration, this book offers a significant reassessment of the place of women in the Irish diaspora. It demonstrates the important role played by women in the construction of Irish diasporic identities, comparing Irish women's experience in Britain, Canada , New Zealand and the United States. The book considers how the Catholic Church could be a focal point for women's Irish identity in Britain. It examines how members of the Ladies' Orange Benevolent Association (LOBA) maintained a sense of Irish Protestant identity, focused on their associational life in female Orange lodges. The book offers a lens on Irish society, and on countries where they settled, and considerable scope for comparative analysis of the impact of different cultures and societies on women's lives. It reviews key debates in Transnational Studies (TS) and Diaspora Studies (DS) before discussing the particular contribution of DS in framing 1990s study of migrant and non-migrant Irish women. Feminist and queer theory scholarship in Irish DS has begun to address the gender and sexual politics of diaspora by attending to the dynamics of boundary expansion, queering and dissolution. The book suggests that religion can be both a 'bright' and a 'blurry' boundary, while examining how religious identities intersect with ethnicity and gender. It also includes the significance of the categories of gender and generation, and their intersection with ethnicity in the context of the official London St Patrick's Day Festival.

Irish diaspora studies and women: theories, concepts and new perspectives

D. A. J. MacPherson and Mary J. Hickman

M&H 00_Tonra 01 08/04/2014 07:11 Page 1
INTRODUCTION
Irish diasporastudies and women:
theories, concepts and
new perspectives
D. A. J. MacPherson and Mary J. Hickman
Popular usage of the term ‘Irish diaspora’ has grown in parallel with the proliferation of academic studies that apply the term to any number of migrant or
ethnic groups.1 In an Irish context, during the 1990s President Mary Robinson
was at the forefront of public discussion in which the ‘Irish abroad’ became the
‘Irish diaspora’. Robinson’s conception of an Irish diaspora embraced a diverse

create plurilocal homelands
throughout the diaspora. The aim is to broaden the understandings of
intersectional analyses for those who study race, gender and/or
globalisation in sport and it is therefore written from a discursive
space where physical cultural studies, black diasporastudies and
Caribbean studies overlap. A thorough understanding of the concept of
diaspora is necessary in order to

lifting of the
persecution of Catholics in her native country. Her book was published
not in London, but in Bruges. Who, then, was Lady Lucy Herbert, and
what is her significance for diasporastudies? She wrote from exile, for
she had taken a decision which many sons and daughters of Catholic
reconceptualising diaspora
21
families still took. She was the fourth daughter of William Herbert (c.
1626–96), first marquess of Powis, servant of James II and duke of Powis
(1689) in the Jacobite creation, who after 1689 had left his magnificent
seat, Powis Castle in

‘respectable’ and ‘feminine’ while claiming the public space of
the streets as theirs.
In addition to theoretical considerations of gender, this book has been
informed by recent interdisciplinary work in diasporastudies.31 In 2003,
Kevin Kenny outlined some of the problems with the adoption of the
term ‘diaspora’ in Irish ethnic and migration history.32 Surveying the
broadening out of its definition from classical dispersion and exile from
homeland to encompass any type of migration or ethnic identity, Kenny
called for a more precise usage of the term that focused on

the ambit of Irish diasporastudies than the transitory involvement
of small numbers of Irishmen in the affairs of the Indian
subcontinent. However, transience has not precluded the existence of
a considerable historiography of Irish temporary emigration. 12 Temporary
emigration was a common feature of Irish life before the study
period, with seasonal migrations from the south-eastern counties to

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the
study of migration, emigration and immigration, at both scholarly and popular levels.
Throughout Europe, North America and the Antipodes, the enduring popularity of diasporastudies is reflected in numerous research projects and publications, as well as teaching,
media and museum coverage, cultural tourism and the promotional and co-ordinating work of
bodies such as the Association of European Migration Institutions. 1 But despite all this activity one crucial theme

introduction
21/12/04
11:04 am
Page 1
Introduction
This book has evolved over nine years. The year 1993 saw the publication
of my co-edited Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader,
which was the first anthology of postcolonial cultural studies to appear in
print.1 Since then the field has rapidly expanded into a major academic
industry.2 Diasporastudies, black Atlantic studies, transnational studies,
globalisation studies, comparative empire studies have emerged alongside
and within the original field. My responses to the field’s developments